Ray Comfort withwith the last talk of the conference on “how to reach the lost”.
To be effective, you must attend to yourself first. Must continue in the word.
Bible over belly. No read, no feed. Read the Bible every day.
Do not listen to your fears otherwise you’ll miss God’s direction.
Ken Ham gives his last talk on “Creation/Evolution – it is NOT religion vs science”
Radical way of presenting the gospel: the way God does it – starting at the beginning.
Whole purpose of answers in Genesis is evangelism. No point in someone becoming a creationist of they don’t trust in their creator Jesus.
Lesson from Job – were you there? We know so little but God knows everything.
Operational science / origins science. Atheists don’t want to admit that they have beliefs, so they don’t make this distinction.
Revelation is the key to understanding the past, not “the present is the key to the past”.
Intelligent design. Good arguments but faith comes by hearing the word. The heart of man is deceitful. Even if people are convinced by the arguments, they are likely to go after another God due to their hearts wanting to avoid the real God.
Lazarus dead. Jesus said take away the stone. We could do that. We couldn’t raise him. Only Jesus could do that. Jesus could have spoken the stone away with his word as well, but he involved people. Apologetics is like taking the stone away. Jesus does the raising.
Stuart Burgess on “the uniqueness of man”.
The human body is over-designed. It is designed for more than just survival.
Human arched feet very different from apes’ flat feet. We have 3 arches giving 3 points of contact (heel and two at front), ideal for balance.
Apes have 26 facial muscles, humans have 54. Enables more facial expressions. Smile muscles have no other purpose. No evolutionary advantage.
We’re only creature that shows the whites of the eyes, which allows others to see where we are looking. Evolutionary disadvantage but helps communication.
Language has far more words than needed for survival.
Singing is evidence of over design.
Long childhood makes us different from apes. No evolutionary explanation.
Unique features: Marriage for companionship. Aware of nakedness. Female always fertile. Women’s time of ovulation is hidden. Baby skull deforms to allow birth. Brain. Ability to memorise large amounts of information. Pi to 42000 decimal places (record).
Girl had half her brain removed. No speech as that side was removed. Girl was fluent in 2 languages 4 years later.
Legs half total height. Arm span same as height. Belly button centre.
Objections:
Disease. Answer is the fall.
Vestigial organs. Aren’t any.
Bad design. Human eye. Objections made by people who don’t understand, like Dawkins.
Reports of attempts by atheists to get him thrown out of his position as professor at Bristol university. He has stayed in his job. He got a standing ovation at the end.
Ken Ham on “Genesis compromise and the decline of the church”.
We need a new reformation in the church on biblical authority.
Age of the earth is an authority issue. It’s an indirect salvation issue (why we need to be saved – it gives a proper understanding of the origin of sin and death). It’s a gospel issue (the gospel includes what we are saved from).
To secularists, time is their god. They need it for their anti-god beliefs to work.
The church today has taken the “Canaanite” religion of the day to explain origins.
Brian Edwards on “understanding Genesis 1”.
Categorical imperative – God to Eve “you shall not eat”
Catastrophic interrogative – Satan to Eve “did Gid really say”
Creation has been marred by the fall, as have our minds, so we shouldn’t use creation as authority to interpret the Bible. Must begin with scripture. Scripture and Christ are the only things uncontaminated by the fall.
Why is Genesis so important?
Introduces God. Origins of many things. Introduces the supernatural.
It’s only in Genesis 1-2 that Christians allow unbelieving scientists to tell us what it means. However, plenty of other bits of the Bible refer to Genesis 1-2 and treat it as historical fact. In these references it’s often used to bolster doctrinal truth (“have you not read…”). The history is used to support the doctrine.
Genesis 1-3 is historical genre, not poetry.
“waw” consecutive in Hebrew is a marker of Hebrew prose, not poetry. 51 times in Genesis 1. Means “then”, mostly.
“day” in Genesis 1 has a clear meaning in exegesis. Only reason to interpret otherwise is due to scientific concerns.
Dawkins’ recent comments on aborting Down’s syndrome babies is consistent with evolution, hence the relative lack of surprise in the secular media. His conclusion is the same as Hitler’s – get rid of poor quality stock.
Questions for evolutionist: Why did two sexes evolve from a single sex reproduction? How did it evolve? They don’t know answer.
Is our worldview dictated by scientific theory or God’s word?
Steve Ham speaks on “in the image of God”.
Naturalistic worldview: we are just rearranged molecules. Therefore no reason for a person to be valued higher than something else.
Our belief about origins has a huge effect on our ethics.
The determining factor of human value is that God made us in his image (Genesis 1:26-28). God created mankind in his image. 2 categories: male and female. Idolatry prohibited because God has already made something as his image – mankind.
All people in biblical history (except Jesus) fail as image bearers. Jesus is the image of the invisible God (Colossians 1).
In Jesus we can be who we were created to be.
Stephen Lloyd on “Flood Theology: why does Noah’s flood matter?”
The flood doesn’t get much of a mention within Christianity. We think it’s not that important. Often seen as a children’s story. Adults see it as just a judgement story. That’s true, but there’s more to it. Some find it embarrassing due to scientific concerns.
Creation science is focused on the flood, as the original creation was destroyed by it. However we often miss the theological side of it. As creationists focus on scientific arguments, they are ignored as they don’t seem to have theological consequences.
All history:
The flood is part of the storyline of the whole Bible – 2 Peter 3:5-7. Flood is divider between past and present. Second coming is divider between present and future. Creation then destruction of that creation then re-creation. Noah preserved through judgment event just as Christians will be preserved through next judgment event. Noah is like a second Adam. Father of all. Has a “fall” in a garden.
Matthew 24:37-39. Flood is the pattern for 2nd coming.
Size of the flood – same as world of creation. Just as 2nd coming relates to the whole world.
Evangelism – flood is used in NT as a warning.
All people:
The flood brings about an era of abundant grace. Before the flood, only 8 believers were left in the world. After the flood, God brings a new family which spreads across the world. The church today isn’t small!
2 Peter 3:9. Delay in 2nd coming is due to grace.
Post flood world is precursor to new creation. Made of same stuff.
Period of abundant grace includes all people. Covenant to Noah is for all his descendants and the animals. If local flood, covenant wouldn’t apply to others outside flood region. Same with promise to Abraham – applies to all nations (i.e. from Babel, and before from Noah due to context).
All things:
Flood covered the globe. The gospel includes the whole of creation. Colossians 1:20. Salvation not just about individual sinners repenting – it’s about the whole creation. Flood affects more than just people – God judges whole creation. Something was wrong with creation itself. Genesis 6 – the earth was corrupt, “all flesh” includes animals, who had also been corrupted. Contrast with all very good (not just people) at original creation. Similarly, new creation covers whole creation, not just mankind. Man’s state affects state of whole creation. Romans 8:19-21.
Noah means comfort/rest/relief. Relief from the curse. Parallels between Noah and Jesus.
Big danger of Christianity losing its connection with the physical world.
The flood does matter theologically. (Therefore we should also address the scientific aspects.)
Day 2. Ray Comfort up first with “Keys to Zeal”.
Fear in evangelism: the brave are not those who have no fear, but those who overcome their fear and evangelise anyway.
The Bible doesn’t say “God has a wonderful plan for your life”. It gives us a rescue from the judgement we deserve. Many Christians have very difficult lives (e.g. the apostles).
We think people are happy so don’t need the gospel. Non-Christians can be happy but it’s not all about happiness.
We cut ourselves off from non-Christians.
We are willing to play with fear to go sky diving etc, but not to give out a gospel tract.
Imagine if we got £1000 for every time we witnessed to someone? Would we be more keen to do it?
John Mackay up next on “Creation, Flood and Babel”.
“Many theories and opinions contract the Bible. But the facts never do.”
Day 1.
Ken Ham was first up with his talk “why does Genesis matter in 2014?” Here are two points that struck me:
Ken mentioned the “Genesis 3 attack”. This is based on Satan’s first attack to Eve: “did God really say?” He was causing her to doubt the authority of God’s word. Ken said this is the attack Satan always uses, but it manifests itself in different ways in different generations. Today’s attack is based on evolution (in the molecules to man sense), the big bang and millions of years. This is the area that Satan is attacking today in causing people to doubt God’s word.
However, the Christian world has by and large allowed this attack to happen without resistance. Christians often say you can believe what the world says about origins but as long as you trust in Jesus that’s fine. Well, you can be a Christian and believe in millions of years etc., but a lot of young people are growing up in Christian homes, being told they can believe in evolution etc., and then coming to see that the Bible doesn’t fit with it, as well as the Bible being criticised at school. To fix this they are tending to lose their faith in the Bible rather than in evolution. The church needs to wake up to this attack and to uphold the authority of God’s word from the beginning of the Bible, and equip people to be able to explain why God’s word is reliable and why evolution is a myth.
The second point was to point out an inconsistency in how Christians deal with attacks from atheist scientists. If someone like Richard Dawkins says “Jesus didn’t rise from the dead as dead people can’t rise”, Christians are quick to disagree. When asked why they believe Jesus rose, they say “because the Bible says so and we trust God’s word”. This is the same for all miraculous events that the Bible records from Genesis 12 onwards.
However, when a Christian is asked if they believe in creation as stated in the Bible, they say “we don’t believe that because scientists have told us it didn’t happen that way”. They take the scientists as a higher authority than the Bible for Genesis 1-11, but the Bible as a higher authority than scientists for Genesis 12 onwards.
Somewhat inconsistent!
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